Dawn on the lake

There was a time when I thought there could hardly be anything more beautiful than sunset on my lake. But lately, I have been thinking that dawn is far more magical.

Sunrise on the lake

And suddenly, just like that, water is water again.

Another day, another sunset.

You'd think I'd get tired of the same exact view and capturing it with the tiniest, most subtle variations of color and tone. But somehow, I don't.

Sunset the other night.

Thawing

Above, an image from cross-country skiing last weekend. And below, three photographs from the past few days, after days of rain melted the knee-deep snow. The lake is back to a flowing entity, from a solid surface holding the huts of the ice fisherman just a few days ago. The changes take my breath away sometimes.

By the way, I've finally posted some photographs from the New Years trip to Yosemite. :)

Lone walker on the lake

A shot from the lake shortly before I left Michigan.

I had thought all these shots got lost from my card; I was so delighted to find it was hiding out somewhere in the recesses.

Laura and I took Mancho out to Point Isabel today. It wasn't quite as stunning as usual given the overcast weather and the narrow path flanked by a chain-link fence protecting the newly seeded grass on one side and the caution tape preventing access to the polluted water on the other, due to the recent oil spill. It was the regular dog-fest, though, and we were particularly struck by a trio of incredibly massive dogs that probably came up to our bustlines, or perhaps just our waists. But anyway, they were the kind of dogs that sort of take your breath away. Two were silver-gray, one was brown. I don't know my breeds well enough to say what they were.

We talked about going dancing at Cocomo tonight, and I was planning on joining Brian in The City first and meeting his girlfriend Alison and joining them for a learning with the Mission Minion, but I think I'm in for the night. I picked up a bit of a cold in the chaos of the end of the semester and the travel and debauchery here, and now I just need to rest to get over my sore throat.

Family readers, I have posted new Christmas photos on Flickr. If you don't have an account, it's free and easy to create one so you can view them. Just write me a note so I know who you are :)

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously

Still so very grey. The fog brings snow, then ice, then pure rain that melts away the ice from the lake's surface. And just this weekend, I saw the little kiddies out there playing hockey on the ice. And wondered at the daring of their parents, to let them out there so shortly after the surface had hardened.

I have to search to find color in the surroundings, when the lovely birds have finished pecking at the trees outside my living room windows. But there is beauty all around, and with a little patience, I see the colors through the gray.

and it retreats again

ice spreads its wings across the surface at dawn

I had wondered and wondered what it might look like when the lake started to freeze over. Surely it wouldn't happen overnight, I thought, but in a process; but what would the process be like? When we were still seeing raspberries at the farmers' markets in late October, I wondered if it would even truly happen. But the time of winter has come, and I am burrowing delicately into the new world I find myself surrounded by, furnishing my inner world with words and soundscapes new or dusty from disuse, and polishing them to match the startling gray that is emerging all around.

What is that like, you wonder? Here I have created a less than perfect panorama, but a panorama nonetheless. (I would love to take a course to improve my digital photography skills in shooting and editing . . . and also to buy a camera that gives me more flexibility. But for the moment, I have what I have.) Click it to see the full view. (Click the little tiny box that isn't loading below for the huge version.)

Turn bleak December once more into May . . .

(Snow like stars over the lake's edge. The surface started freezing over last night.)

We had ample warning for the storm, so I canceled my plans to go dancing at Papi O's with Alice tonight, and my meeting with my undergraduate honors mentee to talk about her thesis, and instead spent the day getting everything set up for me to hide away until Monday (or longer!) if need be. There's something about living in such a quiet spot in the country that makes you feel in tune with (and at the mercy of) nature in ways I just don't in the city. Since the summer storm that knocked out my power and thus my water supply (since I'm on a well) for three days running, I have not taken the weather lightly.



My tree looks rather different in this light. It reminds me of my brother's college class in which he had a journal he maintained for a tree for a period of a semester.

So, this morning, I got showered and made my way down to Ann Arbor right after waking to take care of errands so I would be sure to be back in the country by late afternoon. I picked up my students' essays, then bought an ungodly amount of groceries at Trader Joe's, which was filled almost to capacity, with cars struggling to move in the parking lot, and grocery carts getting caught in gridlock in the aisles. I stopped at Busch's too, when I got back to the country, so I could get rid of more of my recycling, and get even more groceries.

By the time the snow started falling, I was tucked away in my cozy cottage, with a huge pot full of sumptuously delicious grown-up macaroni and cheese I couldn't help but eat out of the pot with a wooden spoon, and my absolutely massive enamel stock pot bubbling away with fresh stock in the works. In fact, I didn't even realize the storm had finally arrived, until I went out with my flashlight and kitchen shears to clip some fresh thyme and sage from the garden plot, and I saw everything covered with white.

My little path to the water has all but disappeared in just an hour's snowfall.

The house smells heavenly, of herbs and vegetables, and is toasty warm. I am drinking O'Douls and feel a little like a child in a playhouse. A Californian in the snow. I don't think I'll ever get over the magic of it, the mystical quiet that settles in all around when the ground is padded with tiny crystals everywhere.

Naturally I couldn't resist taking some photos. Tomorrow I'll see if I can get out to explore the villages, if the conditions aren't too rough for driving a few miles.

For those of you wondering about the title of this post, it is from the ever-so-beautiful song Trees on the Mountains from the opera Susannah by Carlisle Floyd (libretto also by the same):

The trees on the mountain are cold and bare
The summer just vanished and left them there
like a false-hearted lover just like my own
who made me love him, then left me alone
Come back, young lover
Come back, blue flame
My heart wants warming, my baby a name
Come back young lover, if just for a day
Turn bleak December once more into May

If you're interested, here's an interview of Floyd. The opera isn't popular with everybody. I've never seen it live. But I still get the songs in my head, especially this one and Ain't It a Pretty Night, which I heard my fellow singers working on in vocal repertory classes back in Santa Cruz. And yes, Miss Robin, that means you. :)

Thursday's sunset. I was writing writing writing. But guess what? I finished my Qualitative Methods paper!

Windy!

Super windy, very cold day on the lake today. The trees look barer day by day. I was struck with the sense of barrenness of the landscape as I drove down the highway yesterday, navigating the wind blowing my little pickup around the road.

I'm hiding out this morning to take care of personal business and writing, since it's the week of AAAs and we're just showing a film in Anthropology 101. So, back to that paper on my colleague in Social Work for Qual Methods. :)

I'm cranking up the heat and putting on some coffee. And thinking it's about time to explore the possibility of weatherproofing my windows. Brr!

Sunset, as Winter finally arrives in Michigan . . .

(more)

It's quite a spectacular morning out here on the lake, the day after our first proper snow storm in Southeastern Michigan. (When it started the night before last, I was completely convinced the rustling sound was my mischievous possum friend in the leaves outside my office again, and it took my slipping on my shoes and taking my massive flashlight out to look at the icy pieces collecting on the empty ground before I was satisfied in the knowledge that I was alone with the snow.) I'm sitting here with a leftover slice of pumpkin pie and a milky coffee, enjoying the contrast of the clear blue sky with the bright bright white of the snow lit all up with sunlight, watching the occasional flashes of bluejays and cardinals darting through the trees in the garden plot across the way. I get up periodically to dance to a particularly inspiring bit of Regina Spektor or Aimee Mann and then rub orange-scented oil into my rather neglected vintage wood furniture.

My God, vacation is a delight. I've been making my way through the house with cleansers and cloths that had been hiding in the cupboard nearly since I purchased them. This is the kind of chore I dread when I come home from Southwest Detroit twelve hours after I left the house, when it's already dark outside, or from Ann Arbor after teaching my 75 students, with a stack of all their papers to grade . . . but on a day of quiet solitude with the autumn leaves floating by on the breeze, when I've made my way in my pajamas and slippers to the desk to turn on favorite music, to the stove to prepare a coffee, with a quick sneak outside to take a few adoring photos, it's a sweet joy. Attending the spiritual house.

Yesterday I spent the better part of the day hiding away in the kitchen, baking pumpkin pie and apple cobbler and enjoying the sweet spicy scents of autumn specialities merging with the warmth of vanilla and aromatherapy candles. (More on that in Kitchen Empress!)

I then made the trek down to Ann Arbor to spend a beautiful Thanksgiving evening with Alice and her family: her brother and sister-in-law, their darling child, all the adoring grandparents,and a lovely German neighbor family, with two angelic children whom I teased with little songs I dusted off from my high school German classes. The food was delicious, the company even more of a treat. I would have loved to have seen my own family, but I'm just too tired and broke and behind in my work to travel anywhere right now. Lucky that I have an adopted family through my dear friend :) In the end, we had FOUR DESSERTS to go with the feast, because Alice's sister-in-law AND her mother both also baked pies. Apple cobbler, and pies from pumpkin, rhubarb, and Concord grape. A true autumn bounty.

Here, some of the sneaky photos. . .

My view of the neighbors' lots filled with snow.


The boats and docks stacked for the winter and gathering snow.



And a glance across the lake on the near side, with the shore dusted with white.


And this one's for Mom, finally -- a glimpse of the humble exterior of my little cottage, from the gravel road. Behind, you can spy the lake around on the other side of the tiny house. In the foreground, you can see my little herb garden that I planted shortly after I moved here in June, with rosemary, sage in a pot, savory, and two varieties of lavender that seem to be thriving since the weather has cooled a bit. (We'll see how they do with the freezing temperatures.) And through the window there, if you were looking right now, you'd see me here at my computer on my massive L-shaped IKEA desk, in my PJs, shuffling papers, pulling some fresh clothes out of the dryer, listening to the Decemberists, finishing my coffee, and contemplating starting some writing. If I have my way, depending on how things go in the next few years, this may be the window I look from when I'm writing up my dissertation one day. . .

even the grey days are stunning . . .

Autumn Sunset